Display posts from previous

Sort by

Best buy, Fundsmith a few months ago, up more than 10%. Want to buy more but wary this can't go on indefinitely, so wait for a plateau or small fall, or jump in straight away... Hmmmm Probably won't matter much in the long term.

Investing in a biotech fund in Jan 14, fifteen months later up 80%. Concerned about a bubble, I crystallised some of the profits last April and put them into another fund. Not long after the biotech fund dropped (quite dramatically over a six month period). Recently bought back into the fund at a 50% Discount as I believe it will still be a great long term investment.

On the flip side a small percentage of my portfolio is held in educated punts. My first punt wasnt that educated as I bought into Asos when their shares plummeted to Â£32, thinking that they couldn't drop further and low and behold they dropped a lot further and it took me over a year to make a paltry Â£50 profit!

Not sure how we can boast or weep about recent decisions, investing usually takes years. I recently cashed in a unit trust I bought in 2008 during the crash, and which doubled in value. That is the boast. The weep is that I bought into the tracker myth, and could have made far more. I sold one half before April 6 and one half after. L&G allow you to sell the shares, but take at least 3 working days to transfer the money. So, order to sell goes in on Sunday, shares sold on Monday 3pm. Money arrives in my account sometime on Friday morning. L&G enjoy my money during that time. And in the meantime the markets rise.

Weep (sort of) - another tax year passed and again I'm being a bad tax avoider, sorry ML that should be bad tax planner. Didn't sell anything so didn't use any of last tax years capital gains allowance, was wanting to get rid of a share I have a very small holding that's been unloved by me but price went down too much in the last month to make worth while.

Boast (sort of) - New tax year and I put max in S&S ISA then spent it all on share on the same day at lowest trading price that day before it went ex-dividend the next day.

ok, but i do try to take as few big decisions as possible in investing - i.e. both avoiding placing big bets, and only changing strategy very slowly, so this will be boring ...

last week, in my SIPP, topped up VEUR (vanguard developed europe ETF) again, using income generated within the SIPP since i last did this in january. this is just a mechanical decision, topping up the holding that is relatively down, so in danger of falling under its target allocation. VEUR was actually up c. 5% since i last topped it up, but i guess other things had gone up more, so it was relatively underperforming again.

next week, in my shares ISA, cash from dividends within the ISA will be used to top up SGRO (segro). this is where most of the dividends in the ISA have been going for the last 2 years (except when i topped up SSE instead). i wanted another property holding, but thought i'd steer clear of buying another company with a lot of central london property. the holding is now about up to size, so next month i may start buying something new inside the ISA.

this is all using cheap Â£1.50 regular dealing, because i'm a cheapskate.
Originally posted by grey gym sock

”
Boring is good for an investor.

Can I ask which platform do u use? Do u use the regular dealing to over a period of time and cancel it or are you able to set it up for a single deal and cancel it before the second month?

Can I ask which platform do u use? Do u use the regular dealing to over a period of time and cancel it or are you able to set it up for a single deal and cancel it before the second month?
Originally posted by darkidoe

”
Grey gym sock and I both use Youinvest. On their 'regular investments' screen you can decide what investments you want to buy monthly on their 'bulk buy' discounted fee on the 10th of every month. You can change this as often as you like, they just look at it before the start of business on the 10th and book your trades if you have the available funds.

If you don't have the available funds it will fail and try again the next month. But you can edit and play around with this as often as you like during the month because they are only going to look at what deal(s) you have saved on that screen, when that time of the month comes around. So if you fancy buying Â£1000 of Lloyds shares you can just say you want Â£1000 per month of Lloyds shares, and then as soon as it's bought you those shares for a Â£1.50 dealing fee, you can delete it and say you want Â£250 per month of VEUR, but then the next day change your mind and say you want Â£200 a month of VEUR and Â£150/m of SSE and Â£100/m of VNQ. Whatever you have when the next monthly dealing date rolls around, gets bought, if there's enough money on the account.

So if you are contributing Â£160 a month you can say you want Â£500 a month of ABCXYZ and every 3 months or so once your contributions plus dividend receipts combine to give you Â£500 in the account, it will buy it, leaving you with dealing costs of Â£6 a year because there were only 4 successful purchases over the entire year. But yes, long story short you can set it up, do one deal, and cancel it so it doesn't try again the next month.